The AIF Project

John Joseph Isaac PAGE

Regimental number5088
Place of birthCobar, New South Wales
ReligionChurch of England
OccupationPorter
Address43 Collier Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales
Marital statusSingle
Age at embarkation20.2
Height5' 10"
Weight126 lbs
Next of kinSister, Mrs F E Weeks, 43 Collier Street, Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales
Previous military serviceNil
Enlistment date25 July 1915
Date of enlistment from Nominal Roll23 August 1915
Place of enlistmentHolsworthy, New South Wales
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name18th Battalion, 13th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/35/2
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Sydney, New South Wales, on board HMAT A55 Kyarra on 5 June 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll33rd Battalion
FateKilled in Action 12 October 1917
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 23), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
122
Other details

War service: Western Front

Embarked Sydney, 3 June 1916; disembarked Plymouth, England, 3 August 1916.

Admitted to Fargo Military Hospital, 25 August 1916 (not yet diagnosed); discharged to 5th Training Bn, 9 September 1916 (pleurisy).

Taken on strength, 34th Bn from 18th Bn, 30 September 1916.

Proceeded overseas to France, 21 November 1916.

Admitted to 11th Australian Field Ambulance, 7 January 1917 (otitis media), and transferred to No 2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station; to Ambulance Train No 24, 12 January 1917; to 14th Stationary Hospital, Boulogne, 13 January 1917; to No 1 Convalescent Depot, 18 January 1917; discharged to Base Details, 19 January 1917; rejoined unit, in the field, 26 January 1917.

Killed in action, 12 October 1917.

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal
SourcesNAA: B2455, PAGE John Joseph Isaac

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